Who Will Save Israeli Jews from PCG? PCG Makes Website Directed at Israeli Jews

This is the 2000th post for the Living Armstrongism blog. I wish to thank you, the readers, for inspiring me to carry on with this blog.

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PCG has started up another radio show entitled Watch Jerusalem which is hosted by Brent Nagtegaal. PCG has also made an accompanying website. It is will attempt to target Israeli Jews in particular and will refrain from mentioning certain passages in the New Testament to make sure that this audience will not be turned off by a message perceived as Christian thus obscuring the fact that they teach doctrines that are contrary to the Jewish faith. They are also planning of doing some advertising in Israel to promote it and to translate some of their articles into Hebrew.

As if Israeli Jews do not have enough problems already.

This development was discussed by Joel Hilliker and Brent Nagtegaal in a recent broadcast of Trumpet Hour (November 23, 2016).

Nagtegaal: This website has more of an Israeli audience in mind as opposed to thetrumpet.com which is definitely for everyone across the planet. Watch Jerusalem is as well. And yet we're deliberately going to be targeting and looking for an Israeli audience more than anything else. Just because they themselves are very unaware, it seems, both of the prophetic significance, a lot of events that take place in Jerusalem and the Middle East, but then also they're unaware of the archaeological discoveries that are happening underneath their noses.  

And like I'm in contact with people on the street. I've got some friends. I basketball with people. I meet up with people that aren't in the archaeological world, everyday Israelis, and they wouldn't have a clue what's going on...  

Hilliker: That's amazing. 

Nagtegaal: ...what's being found. And, or even religious people might not know what's being found and what can be really something that can strengthen their faith. And so the direction of this website is definitely tending towards that audience most of all. 

We are gonna try not to use terms and different passages even in the New Testament to try and make sure that a Jewish audience, Israeli audience, reading an article, wouldn't be put off just by what seems a Christian message. We just want to show the facts. We just want to show the facts from their own Bible and the facts of the Biblical discoveries that are being confirmed from their Bible in their own country as well. 

There is an audience out there, I think, that would be captivated by this but there is no real news organization that focuses on it. Yes. You'll have a discovery and then the news people, they would put out a story, but then two days later it's gone. And yet this is something that's really important that should stay in peoples' memory for far longer. And that is what we are going to attempt to do. (Trumpet Hour, November 23, 2016, 6-8 minutes.)

So this website is to target Israeli Jews in particular and to do so PCG is going to avoid mentioning the New Testament in this website and radio broadcast which obscures the fact that PCG teaches doctrines that are contrary to the Jewish faith.

It is mentioned that Gerald Flurry has been wanting to have a website catering for Israeli Jews for years and that he has been working on this website for about six or seven months. One of his directions seems to be to not offend the audience by mentioning the New Testament. This obscures the fact that PCG teaches doctrines that are contrary to the Jewish faith. Why would they try to hide who they are to their desired Israeli Jewish audience?

Also noteworthy is the allusion to PCG's Islamophobic attitudes towards Muslims.

Nagtegaal: From the very beginning, it's been years now that Gerald Flurry has asked for and has been thinking about a website that specifically tailored to the Jewish nation over here. And it's just one of those things where we've been trying to get the resources to do it and there's been different priorities that has taken place or taken the priority of where we've needed to direct our limited resources to. And yet once I came over here it seemed like that we had somebody that could be more dedicated to ensuring that we had a website now that we've got somebody here.  

So for the past six or seven months he's been heavily involved and consulted about exactly what's on the site. What shouldn't be on the site as well.  He's very happy that we have this two pronged focus both on archaeology, history and then also prophecy as well. Because they really do go together. There are end time prophesies which concern the discovery of things in Israel as well. So they ,,, he's been involved very much in that. He knows exactly what's going up. Well. The layout of the site and how it should look.  

And, yeah. He's ... I would say that he's just, he's super careful to not offend anybody. To not, to put anything up on there that would, somebody would look on the site and say, Well I'm not going to read that article because of this, that and another reason. He really wants people to just see the message that God has for the Jews and for Israel and to remove any obstacles that they might have before they would even read it. But we have to understand that for a Jewish audience, they see things from the New Testament and/or New Testament chronology or even the word New Testament and to them it is like the Koran for a Christian. It is that much of an anathema. They do not, they wouldn't even read it. 

So we're just trying to. We're not telling any... We're telling truths from the Bible but we've decided to use, as per Gerald Flurry's direction, the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, looking at He[brew] ... Jewish artifacts, to really just show them what's underneath their noses as much as possible. 

And even today, I mean, it's, just before I got here I took a look at the analytics page and we had somebody from Haifa, here in Israel, looking at the site. So that was a good sign. It's a small beginning and we hope to do some advertising here in Israel in the future to try and promote the site so that they know it's there. But really that's the main audience we're going after and that has followed the direction straight from Gerald Flurry. (8-11 minutes.) 

It is intriguing how Nagtegaal talks of Christians, presumably meaning PCG members, viewing the Koran as anathema. Shgamefully PCG has a long history of vilifying Muslims in general and of presenting them in a sensationalist and threatening manner thus promoting Islamophobia. This hostility is evident even in the comment above.

There is a difference between simply choosing not to join a certain religion and choosing to be hostile and bitter toward members of that different religion. Sadly PCG tends to choose the latter option regarding Muslims.

It is unfortunate that this attitude is projected onto Jews. As is well known there are long standing religious differences between Jews and Christians and such differences need to be viewed in a respectful manner. Historically these differences were even used as a pretext to impose shameful discrimination and hostility against Jews. We need to be careful to never allow terrible things such as anti-Semitism to arise again.

They then discuss efforts underway to translate PCG articles into Hebrew to reach Israeli Jews who do not know English.

One thing that Gerald Flurry did say is that he really wanted it out in Hebrew as well. A Hebrew version of the site. Because they, while a lot of Israelis do speak English it's not their preference and there are definitely some that don't speak English. Especially some of the more Zionist ones that believe in Israel's right to this land. A lot of them, you know, that do live in the settlements in the West Bank and such, they don't really have a good, they havn't really mastered English that well. (11-12 minutes.)

Is this an indication that they wish to target the settlers in particular?

It is mentioned that professional translators, presumably from outside of PCG, will be hired and their work will be checked by Christopher Eames who is learning Hebrew at present.

They hope to make a Hebrew website available in less than six months, possibly as early as three to four months from now.

Nagtegaal: So we are investing a lot of time, resources, money into making the Hebrew site. The Hebrew site, I would say right now, would only be, it would be less than six months away. Hopefully three or four months away before we have that. So it's going to be here really soon. (12-13 minutes.)

Nagtegaal then discuss some of the sources he will consult to provide content for the radio broadcast. While discussing one media source Nagtegaal reveals how far to the right PCG's leaders view themselves in regard to political affairs.

Nagtegaal: They have press conferences with different speakers that comes and gives you first hand accounts and some that might not get published by some of the more left wing English language newspapers here. (14 minutes.)

And so it is now evident that PCG is now trying to reach Israeli Jews through this new website of theirs. Israeli Jews deserve to be spared getting mixed up with PCG, a non-Jewish organization which has a bad reputation for authoritarian tendencies among the COGs and those knowledgeable about the COGs. May this attempt by PCG to reach out toward Israeli Jews and make some of them come under their influence, whether though conversion or any other way, fail miserably.